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Kurt Wallace: This is Kurt Wallace and our guest today on Rare is Larry Hohol, police officer from Luzerne Pennsylvania his website WorseThanRodneyKing.com and his book “The Luzerne County Railroad.” Larry thanks for being with us today on Rare.
Larry Hohol: My pleasure
Kurt Wallace: Now, we have a very important case that you’ve been following over a number of years. We’re witnessing an epidemic of police brutality across the US. Many documented cases. But the case of Robert Leone runs much deeper. One of the most disturbing acts of police violence, corruption and cover up possibly at the highest levels in Pennsylvania. You were contacted by this young man’s parent back in 2011. Could you give us a little bit of a background on what has happened since you’ve been contacted by them in terms of your research about this case?
Larry Hohol: Certainly, the family contacted me after Robert Leone’s mother read my book The Luzerne County Railroad, where I outline the corruption of the judicial system in Luzerne County. It’s a non-fiction book and it takes place in the same courthouse that the kids for cash scandal occurred. That’s a worldwide known scandal where 6,000 children were incarcerated in a privately owned prison and judges received almost $3 million in kickbacks.
Anyway, the mother contacted me and told me this horrific story about how five state troopers and two local officers had beaten her son. And I listened patiently to the story and told her there was basically nothing I could do about it. It was his word against their word. And then she told me that she had a copy of one of the state police dash cam videos. So, she sent that to me and I honestly forget it on my desk for about a week. And she called me up and asked me if I had watched it and I apologized.
And honestly, after I watched the video I pushed myself back from my desk and my jaw was on the ground. I just couldn’t believe what I had seen and heard. So, what I set out to do was to put together a 37 minute long documentary about the case not just on the video, but a lot of support material that was provided by the family in order to try to get an attorney or law firm to represent him. He was in prison for a total of two and a half years after he was assaulted. Fortunately, we were able to get a very large, what I call well-heeled law firm out of Pittsburgh to take the case, where they’re not gonna charge anything to the family if they don’t win. And they have a civil suit that has been filed in federal court and it has been delayed a number of times to go to trial. Naturally, the family wants to get this to trial as quickly as possible. But the state is dragging their feet and the newest date that we have is April 15th. It should have already been heard late summer, early fall of this year but it’s continually being delayed by the state.
Now, its one thing to watch this video and to see and hear all the horrible things that happened while this poor young man was saying ‘yes sir’ and ‘no sir’ and having the life almost knocked out of him. The beatings occurred over an eleven hour period while he was in custody. There were multiple beatings after he was handcuffed and hog tied. He was beaten in the hospital because he tried to beg a nurse for help. And so on, and so forth.
But really what was beyond comprehension is that the family went through all of the safeguards, if you will. All of the people in institutions in government that should look at this video and look at the evidence and do something about it. They filed a complaint with internal affairs with the state police. They went to the FBI. You name it, they went there. They went to the Dept. of Justice. What occurred after the beating was as horrific as the beatings themselves. This is a cover up of the nth degree. This goes all the way to Washington. And I say that I’m not exaggerating. I have spoken personally with the Dept. of Justice in Washington and with the FBI in Williams Port and it is beyond pale that they will not open a formal investigation in this matter. We’ve even had a congressman try to get the DOJ to seriously look at this and the only response we get from the DOJ is they say that it doesn’t meet their guidelines. But they won’t tell us what the guidelines are. Which guideline it didn’t meet and who made that determination. So, that’s where we are with the case right now. Go ahead and fire away with any questions you have.
Kurt Wallace: It’s a bizarre case. What’s so strange about it is the fact that all he did was fail to pull over when he was being followed and police, there was a state patrol behind him for a period of time and he just didn’t pull over. But after this with all of the evidence and I’ve seen the video, you have this documentary on YouTube. I encourage all the listeners to go and listen and watch this actual beating. One of the police officers breaks his hand beating Robert Leone. Pounding him in the face. And one of the charges against Robert Leone was assault on an officer breaking his hand. All of the evidence and everything, how is this case not a slam dunk? How is it such a cover up? And why is it a cover up?
Larry Hohol: Well that’s really fantastic question and it took me a while to figure it out. What is occurring here is it’s kind of like the layers of an onion. And if you start peeling an onion and you get to the next layer and there’s still some skin there you’re gonna keep peeling. And what has happened here is initially it looked like this is just going to be another case where the cops got away with it, okay? But the family doggedly said that’s not gonna happen.
So, where it all started is when they filed a complaint with the internal affairs department of Pennsylvania state police. An internal investigation was done and the family still doesn’t have a copy of that report. The state police are refusing to give it to them. Which is kind of bizarre. But for them to have an investigation and then no disciplinary action to be taken against any of the officers involved really reeks of a cover up.
So, now this documentary was put together to get the law firm. It’s a little dry in some areas because that’s what is was originally intended to do. And it was a second thought to post it on YouTube. And the amount of information that is in there is quite telling as far as what the state police did afterwords. There was a trial held there was a criminal trial held. What the trial judge did and didn’t do during the trial. Talk about stacking the deck.
They charged Robert Leone with 24 criminal counts and by my estimation, the only thing that he was guilty of was not pulling over. He didn’t speed. He didn’t try to elude. He didn’t try to run away. He didn’t try to ram any of the cars. He simply didn’t pull over. That’s it.
They charged him with leaving the scene of what they claim was a minor traffic incident. And then told the family that there was no accident report. Well, there was an accident report. We finally got it from Harrisburg. And there’s nothing in the accident report that ties Leone to that minor accident that started this whole ball rolling. Nothing, there’s no physical evidence. There’s no eye witnesses. They had the driver in the other vehicle testify in court that she thinks it might be him but she couldn’t really see his face for sure. And she wasn’t sure if that was really the car. Well, you should be able to pry up paint samples. You should be able to find a piece of plastic that was broken off his vehicle. Something to tie him into this thing. None of that was present.
So, after the trial. He went to a jury trial thank goodness. He was found not guilty on 20 out of 24 counts. So, you would say, OK well maybe justice was slow in coming but served. Being found not guilty. All of the major felony counts, counts he was found not guilty of her should have been time served. Because he was had $250,000 bail was set because state police claimed they were assaulted. So, he spent six months in jail before his trial. So, time served would have been more than adequate punishment.
Instead he was sentenced to an additional year-and-a-half more. And the judge in the case when you get a sentence like that you pretty much go to state prison you’re not held at the county level. Well, the judge mandated that he be held at the county level which is kind of bizarre. But he did. The district attorney who prosecuted this case I have nothing but disdain for. He has an obligation as district attorney to not only prosecute the guilty but to protect the innocent. And he did neither here and I’ve taken him to task a number of times in a number of different venues and he doesn’t have a leg to stand on for what he did. But he will defend himself till the day he dies probably because of how atrocious this whole things was. It’s an indefensible position that he has taken. Yet, all you have to do is look at the TV interviews he did on this case to see where he’s coming from.
Kurt Wallace: Now on the cover up potential cover up and corruption. What would be the cover up? The fact that this is going on over and over again and this particular case got exposed? Is it a systemic issue with police brutality in that area? Is there some other elements of activity going on with the police departments and the state patrol? What is this that it’s not a national story?
Larry Hohol: Well, here’s a frightening observation that I made and it goes to your question. These state troopers, all of them, knew that they were being recorded via their dash cams. All five patrol cars had dash cams. As far as we know all of the dash cams were rolling. They still haven’t given us all of the dashcams. But they knew that they were being recorded and they did this anyway. Now, when you sit down and you watch this and see it you’re gonna think that you’re in a third world country. So, they didn’t care that they were being recorded. Which goes back to a systemic problem of they had no fear of their supervisors. They had no fear of them doing something wrong and being held accountable. The proof is absolute, it’s positive. There’s no denying it. And yet they did it openly, freely, knowing full well that they were being recorded. That is extremely frightening.
And I’m a very pro law enforcement person. I’m and ex-police officer. I graduated from the Pennsylvania police academy for municipal officers. Which was one of the best in the country at the time I graduated. I’ve been contacted by FBI agents, secret service agents, other Pennsylvania state troopers contacted me. They can’t get involved in any of this right now but they totally support what I’m trying to do as far as exposure. Because this can happen to anybody. They didn’t know who Robert Leone was when this happened him. They had no idea who he was. So, this is an arbitrary incident that it could be your son, your daughter, your cousin. It doesn’t matter, it simply doesn’t matter. They went after some hard-core bank robber that was trying, shooting at em. It was quite the opposite.
Kurt Wallace: Well, we’re going to continue to monitor this story and we really appreciate you coming on today with Rare. Larry Hohol, your website worsethanrodneyking.com. Your book the Luzurne County Railroad. This is a bizarre, horrific, disturbing case – we want to see where it goes and hope that by doing this interview that it sheds some light on the American public to this particular incident and gets this more in the mainstream and we thank you for being on today.
Larry Hohol: I appreciate your time and your concern. Thank you very much.
Police patrol car dashcam of Robert Leone’s beating
Protest in behalf of Robert Leone
